ENTRY 17:
I don’t know what the hell Kunz is trying to do right now. He seems to be trying to unshackle himself. I asked him what his plan was supposed to be, given the fact that we were probably over an ocean right now. He just stared at me with a demented look in his eye. “Fuck if I know. Can’t get locked up there, though.” He sputtered. “I’ve heard the stories... makes Paradise X sound like an actual paradise” Admittedly, those words disturbed me. I hadn’t really thought about where we were going. If civilization was so bad here, I can’t fathom what the prisons were like.
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ENTRY 18:
Fuck me, somebody just came in. He’s tossing everybody parachutes. What the hell is happening?
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ENTRY 19:
This shit... it just keeps escalating. After the guard tossed us the parachutes, he opened the plane doors. A gust of wind hit me in the face as I stared out into the black sky. Kunz asked him what the hell was going on. “Low on fuel” the guard gave him a twisted smirk. “Can’t drop you off. You’ll have to make your own way there.” As he started unshackling everybody, two other guards soon materialized, rifles trained on us. One of the prisoners tried attacking the guard upon being freed, but was shot quickly. He was barely acknowledged beyond that. “If you jump out in the next thirty seconds, you should hit land.” The guard said. “And I know what you’re thinking. You could escape, huh? Well, there’s nobody stopping you. But… it’s a small island. And you don’t want to find out what’s on it. You got a better shot at survival in the rift. Slightly, though.” I’d later learn that “The rift” was the unofficial name of the prison. The guard shot me one last smug grin before walking up and unceremoniously pushing me out. I’d gotten my parachute on just in time. He didn’t give much warning. As I looked up, I saw the other prisoners coming down, one by one.
As we descended, I tried to scope out the island, trying to form some expectations. He didn’t lie. It was small. About the size of a large shopping mall. There was only one compact concrete structure on the entire land mass. That couldn’t be the prison, right? I thought to myself. But, there wasn’t much time for that. I was coming down fast. I made a judgment and opened the parachute. I eventually landed in shallow water near the shore. I tried taking a second to compose myself, but that’s when I heard splashing behind me. I turned around, expecting another prisoner. Nope. Instead, I was met with a mass of large, dark tentacles that pierced the water surface, clambering towards me. As I scrambled onto the shore, one of the appendages slammed down just a few inches from me, cracking the land. I made a beeline for the brooding forest in front of me. I’d estimated that I was about a ten minute walk from the prison. I seriously considered just not going, but then I really thought about it. There was nowhere to fucking go. I jumped at every little sound as I made my way around the dense, black woods. At one point, I thought I could hear a baby crying. As I kept listening, the louder it got. The more guttural and demonic it got. I got the hell away from that. Later, I’d put my hand on a tree, while trying catching my breath. That’s when I felt it move. I pulled away just in time to see what I thought was just a hole materialize sharp, jagged teeth. About a second later, I looked behind me to see an abnormally large humanoid thing crawling towards me. Its three heads moved in a disturbingly erratic manner. Again, I bolted the fuck out of there.
Maybe about a minute later, I crashed into somebody. I freaked out at first, cause who knew what the fuck it was. But then I heard Lauren’s voice. She was hysterical. “What the fuck is this place?” She spoke softly, but frantically. Unfortunately, there was no time to talk. I could still hear that thing crawling towards us. I just pulled her up and told her to run. A while later, we stumbled into a clearing, where we started getting shot at. “Stop!” A booming voice echoed. I looked up to see people wearing some kind of uniforms staring at us in front of a building. This was it. A tall, threatening looking man wearing what looked like a suit of armor started thundering towards us. I braced myself for the worst, but he just moved past. I looked back to see him sprint up to the creature and start strangling it. A fucking horrific sight it was. During the struggle, he called out to the guards. “Prisoners, take ‘em in! You saw the plane! Lazy bastards…”
We were soon ushered into the dull structure. It looked like a shitty reception lobby. There were a few chairs and tables set up under flickering bulbs. More guards lined the perimeter of the place, with about one in five being armored. At the front, there was a small desk manned by some dude with one eye and no eye-patch. He sighed and started typing. What surprised me was how advanced the monitor looked. Given everything that’s happened thus far, I wasn’t expecting that. While he did this, the guards searched us for weapons. One of them inspected my journal for a bit, but eventually gave it back to me. They didn’t even give us uniforms or anything. After a while, the man behind the desk grunted and signaled towards an elevator to the side. There were about four in total. The guards pushed us in. There were too many buttons to count. They just pressed one near the top. The doors creaked shut and we began our descent. After what felt like ten minutes, the doors opened back up and we were blasted by a cacophony of harsh sounds. Before this, I’d never really thought about what hell would be like. This prison was probably a good enough representation.
The architecture was pretty similar to that of Alcatraz, if you’ve ever seen the interior. There were numerous row of cells stretching upwards. And then I looked down at what appeared to be a black, endless fissure. It seemed like the deeper it got, the less lights were present. The most horrific screams came from the cells way below us that were nearly submerged into the darkness. The guards led us down the raucous corridor. I could see how scared Lauren was. But… there really wasn’t anything I could do to comfort her. I took a look into the cells that I passed by. Most of the other prisoners looked human. Some… I couldn’t really tell. At one point, I saw Kunz being escorted from the opposite corridor. We made eye contact for a second. His demeanor was a mixture of pissed off and terrified. The guards eventually pushed us into a small room and closed the bars behind us. That’s when I took a look around.
There were two bunk beds, but the sheets looked dirty as hell and were stained crimson. So were the concrete floors. To be honest, I didn't expect much better. I have to say, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw a toilet and a small sink. There were two other people in there. Both men. I guess gender separation wasn’t really a thing here. But to be fair, I don’t really see how they could accomplish that in a place like this. One of the guys suddenly sat up in the bed. I didn’t know what to expect from the people here, so I was ready to take action if he tried to touch Lauren. But, he smiled at us. A big, toothy yellow grin. “Hey there. Name’s Buck Lane.” He had a comically stereotypical Australian accent. But… he did sound friendly. He walked towards us, arm outstretched. We both shook his hand somewhat hesitantly. I questioned how somebody could be in a place like this and still have any semblance of cheerfulness. And I asked him that. He gave off a dry chuckle. “Well it’s better not to think about it, yeah? Won’t do you any good. That’s how people go crazy. They think about things too much. I mean really, what the hell is consciousness even?” He laughed again. Then his expression went a bit more serious. “But… maybe I’m already there.” I didn’t really know how to respond to that, so I just nodded. I’d noticed that the other guy hadn’t even acknowledged us. I guess Buck noticed me staring, because he chimed in. “Oh, don’t worry bout him. He’s harmless. Gone far off the deep end, though. Look at the shit he writes on the walls.” I brought my gaze over to the wall near his bed. Sure enough, it was covered in writing. I saw a few lines like “CORRUPTION ENGAGED, THERE IS NO FUTURE” before looking away.
He did have a mound of pencils lying near his bed, though. Mine was taken away earlier. I asked him if I could take one but was met with no response. I took it as a yes. We talked to Buck some more. As it turns out, he was also from Earth. But… he didn’t seem so surprised when we told him that we were as well. “It’s more common than you may think.” He stated. “People go missing in planes all the time. Where’d you think they end up? Here. Whatever this place is.” Hearing that gave me chills. For some regular commercial airline passenger going on vacation, only to end up here… that must be terrifying. Apparently, Buck was the sole survivor of a crashed plane headed to Amsterdam. “Weed and hookers, mate” He said. “That’s where I thought I was headed.” His plane crash landed on what seemed to be a stone desert. He walked for days, eating peanuts before he finally stumbled upon a civilization. “They were some strange fuckers” he went on. “Looked like weird rock people. I can’t even describe it” He ended up flipping shit at the sight of them and ran away. Apparently, they took this as a threat for some reason, captured him, and put him into a small cage. He stayed there for days, eating strange bugs they served him before being loaded onto a plane and transported here. “If I went to jail on Earth, there’d usually be a reason. Not here, mate.”
After that, he told us more about the prison. From what he’d gathered, it was pretty much a “global” clusterfuck of an institution. Individuals were brought here from everywhere. This place was also absolutely massive. Ghost Hazard wasn’t the only entrance. There were others as well. Also, the more dangerous a prisoner is considered, the closer their cell was to the bottom. This is fucking insane. For food - twice a day, guards would bring around what Buck referred to as “Nutrition blocks.” I’m staring at one right now. It looks terribly similar to the energy bars Kunz was eating at Paradise X. Safe to say, I have no appetite. Another similarity to Paradise X stems from the fact that this place was also essentially lawless. As long as you didn’t attack the guards, steal food or resources, try to escape, or cause a general large-scale uprising, you had free reign. Nobody had any obligation to step into conflicts that didn’t directly affect them. However, this is the part that really fucking sucks:
A good portion of the day was to be spent on manual labor. It was a lot of general maintenance work, but most of it was supposed to be spent down in “The hole” – a large cave system that had been dug through and excavated by prisoners for years. Nobody really knew what the point of it was. A lot of people just assumed that it was for discipline, but there were other theories. “We’re digging for something, no doubt about it” Buck exclaimed. One theory was that The Warden – the individual who ran this place, was obsessed with finding something called the “Neo-Grail”. Supposedly, sometime during this timeline’s history, the original Holy Grail was corrupted by a powerful demonic entity during some kind of Armageddon. That was the reason why this world went to shit. However, the Warden believed that this wasn’t the end of it. He’d studied various ancient books and scriptures, and had come to the conclusion that there was another Grail hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the prison. That's why he went about building the place. When the Neo-Grail was finally uncovered by a holy man like himself, the world would revert back to peace. But… this was only one theory. Some think that the Warden has more sinister aspirations. That he’s actually trying to start Armageddon himself.
Speaking of the Warden, his history is shrouded in enigma. Nobody really knows where the hell he came from. He has a large office on the surface of one of the island entrances, but rarely comes down to the actual prison. There were a few alleged descriptions of his appearance, however. Not so long ago, there was a large insurgence around the lower levels. People were going insane down there. Eventually, a large enough group was formed to the extent where they decided they were a tangible enough threat to the guards. They started rioting, working up the levels, trying to get to the surface. Eventually, it was deemed enough of an emergency that the warden needed to be called. This was a big deal. As the story goes, he came down to the lower floors himself, completely unarmed and took out the insurgency single-handedly. According to the people that saw him, he was extremely tall, maybe around 8’5. He wore a large trench coat with religious symbols stitched all over it. Then there were his eyes… this was contested, but they were allegedly pitch black. Lifeless. Along with that, he looked young in appearance, despite the fact that he’d been around for a long fucking time. Also, nobody knew where the source of his strength came from. He could pick up a 200 lbs man with one arm and throw him aside with ease. Upon being stabbed, the metal of the blade would just break off of his skin. Some people thought he was the devil incarnate. After that, the theory about him being somebody trying to return peace to the world became a lot less popular. Especially after what happened next.
What lurked at the absolute bottom of the prison was a mystery, with there being no lights down there and all. However, the survivors of the uprising were given a chance to know. Instead of them all being executed, they were given a different punishment. They were lowered, by rope, into the dark crevasse. They screamed like hell and most of them tried committing suicide. They stayed down there for about a minute before being brought back up. Buck witnessed this first hand. He said that he could hear indescribable, animalistic sounds emanating from below. It was a horrific sight when they were brought back up. They were deformed, but not in the traditional sense. Some of them had strange-looking limbs growing out of their legs, some had sprouted eyes on their arms, and some had no semblance of human features at all. “I would try escaping” Buck told us. “But you can probably see why that’s not happening”. For the first time, his cheery expression dropped. It’s as if he just reminded himself of how bad this situation really was.
But… I had know one more thing. “How long are we here for?” I asked him. I was scared as hell for the response. None of the guards had even said a word to us about this. Buck just sighed. “I’ve never seen anybody leave, mate. Couldn’t tell you. But don’t worry about it. She’ll be right” There was no confidence in his voice. I know he doesn’t believe that. I can hear guards opening up the cell doors next to us. Buck said that it’s time to go into the hole. The work day was starting. But here’s the thing… there’s no way in hell that I’m staying in this place. I’ll find a fucking way out if it kills me.
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Credits
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